BioWare ate humble pie over Mass Effect iPhone

Made a 'big mistake' thinking story could carry it.

BioWare co-founder Dr. Greg Zeschuk has admitted the studio had to eat humble pie after the release of Mass Effect: Galaxy for iPhone.

Speaking to VideoGamer.com earlier this month at the Develop conference in Brighton, Zeschuk said a fundamental mistake was the game's undoing, but that it was still a project worth undertaking.

"Oh, I think it [Mass Effect: Galaxy] was very worth attempting. Even when something's not as successful as you'd like, you can take some lessons away and apply them, right? For us, that's kind of where humility comes in, to eat the humble pie on the Mass iPhone game and go, 'Yeeeaaah, we made a big mistake,' in the sense that we thought story could carry it.

Maybe it wasn't even a mistake as much as we took a guess, our guess was wrong, and we learned something in the process - that the fundamental tactile gameplay is actually the key thing on the platform," continued Zeschuk. "Unless your game is utterly designed about tactile gameplay, you shouldn't release it. That was good information for us to have."

However, the failings of ME Galaxy haven't ruled out a return to the portable gaming platform at some point in the future.

"We still poke around on it," said Zeschuk. "At some level we're leaving the expertise on the iPhone to the folks who are experts. We'll explore stuff. For us, it may be things that link into other games. It's the cross-platform nature of the potential platform, like an iPhone app able to somehow access one of the other games' universes, or something. That would be really cool."

He added: "What's interesting is imagining things like the unlocking games on your iPhone. Weird stuff like that would be kinda cool. Again, you would use the tactile gameplay. Suddenly you have to pull out your iPhone, to unlock the thing! We wouldn't make it a requirement, but it could just be a neat experience."